A review by gleefulreader
God Help the Child by Toni Morrison

3.0

This lands somewhere around a 2 1/2 stars for me, but rounded up for the beauty of some of the language. I'm not entirely sure what to say about this book except that both the tone, and the pacing of this book, felt incredibly uneven. There were times it was very hard to place the the time and space in which this book was set - bouncing between phrases and cadences of speech that would set in the early- to mid-twentieth century, but then suddenly jarring you with a very current reference. The strongest part of the book - the description of Bride and her mother Sweetness, and the relationship between them (Sweetness despises her daughter for her exceedingly dark skin) was the part I found most fascinating, but in the end it received shrift due to the many other happenings of the book (abuse! beatings! car accidents! fires!). It felt like there was far too much, and yet not nearly enough, in this book all at the same time.